i just read an article called "learning to heal: from rwanda to rosewood, fla., people are salving the wounds of the past. our contributing editor explores the quest for truth and reconciliation" (i would give you the link but newsweek's site is taking for-ev-er) in a few-weeks-old newsweek about societies healing from acts of evil, terror, etc committed against them. some of it hit me so hard that i copied down some of its quotes to read later. as i read them now, they don't bring on the same reaction, but i decided to put them on here anyways...

~"...it is better to confront the past outright than to risk being forever haunted by its ghosts."

~"there is a new resolve on the part of many -- individuals and nations alike -- to excavate painful parts of the past and to fearlessly face the truth. it is fueled by a sense that the future is hostage to the past and to history's outstanding debts."

~"that impulse, that need, to look back is ... what has propelled troubled societies, from peru to east timor, from sri lanka to sierra leone, to ask whether, if they can come to terms with their history, they can happily embrace a new day."

and another one that's kinda interesting...
~"jose ramos-horta, the nobel peace prize laureate who serves as east timor's minister of foreign affairs, observed, 'the independence of east timor is a byproduct of the electronic age. in 1975, when we were invaded [by indonesia], there were far more killings...And where was the world then? [the atrocities] did not make it into the prime-time news of global television. there was no internet. the world had not been connected.' when violence broke out in east timor in 1999, he pointed out, 'the world had changed. the media were everywhere... That's what made timor free.'"